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What is more evocative of sexed and gendered barrio representations than those black velvet images of voluptuous maidens, feathered warriors, airbrushed Chevys, tattooed cholos, and sacred virgins?

From the hagiography of “locas santas” to the sexual politics of early Chicana activists in the Chicano youth movement, from the representation of Latina bodies in popular magazines to the ritual performance of Mexican femaleness, as enacted by the quinceañera; from the iconic fetishization of el Pachuco, la Malinche, and la Llorona in film and literature, to the cultural tradition of border crossings and the stereotypical renderings of recipe books and calendar art; be it baseball, the Four Directions, or nationalist rhetoric through which Mexican masculinity is measured; by looking at gang life or fraternity initiations, lowriding or hip hop, detective fiction or performance art–all of these pieces engage methods of popular culture studies with discourses of gender, sexuality, identity politics, representation, and cultural production. Velvet Barrios represents the first book to focus fully on the more closeted issues of barrio popular culture.